~ Life Doesn't Have To Be Like This

Search:

The Rooster Falls For the Geebung Sucker Punch and Gets His Feathers Ruffled – But Its How You Get Up Off the Ground That Tells Whether You’re a Chicken, Not How You Fell Down – Archie and the Chook Can Save Racing – If Only David Dares to Fly

Adam Lindsay Gordon – a great Australian poet, racing man, repressed homosexual and druunkard – died on the 24th of June 1870 when he rode his mare down to Brighton Beach, dismounted, and then shot himself in the head.

Thankfully you don’t ride mares or (as far as I know) write poetry, and therefore simply shoot yourself in the foot.

I thought blokes who won the Dux prize at Grammar were supposed to have received a good edumacation, and be lernedd.

Didn’t Mad Max Howell the drunken headmaster and sender of young about to become sexual abuse victims down to Juvenile Aid so he wouldn’t get pinched for drink driving teach you any Aussie poetry in the Spring Hill asylum though son?

“Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.”

That’s Adam Lindsay Gordon writing about Moet sparkling wine, that in his day before Frog patent lawyers like my mate hit town used to be called champagne.

And here he is writing about things being all over bar the shouting.

I f*cking told you I hated fellas looking me in the eye and bullshitting me chookie, and I even gave you an example. The one that you’ve run around town boasting to fellas as a demonstration that Archie’s a bloody idiot about.

Hook. Line. Sinker.

Do you really reckon I’m that stupid that I don’t do my research properly rooster?

Do you imagine that it was purely chance that led us to meet last Thurday week at the Bunger?

Do you really reckon that I’m going to make a f*ckwit of myself in my own hood, in front of the hot bird at the bar that Maggie and I are rooting?

Don’t they teach you anything at Grammar son?

Didn’t you learn about coming in spinner at the game above Bubbles that you used to play at when you were 20 and I was 15?

Did you disbelieve my claims that I have a photographic memory, even after we spent an afternoon yarning about obscure races in the 1980’s and I didn’t get a single one wrong?

You’ve been had rooster.

You thought you were smarter than me, but you were wrong.

And by telling the dodgy times story to anyone who’d listen you’ve given yourself up.

Now I have too.

We had an agreement that what went on tour stayed on tour winged man, but you broke it, and in doing so you broke the Geebung Code too, and spat on the Garden of Eden by doing it after getting pissed as a fowl on our hallowed soil.

I bet you didn’t even pause on the way out to notice the Wall of Remembrance with the Albert Jacka plaque that I lobbied so hard to get erected.

You should have.

Every Australian should. Albert was a great man, and an inspiration to us all.

He jumped into a trench at Gallipoli and single handed he slew seven enemy soldiers and in doing so saved scored of his mates.

Then he went to the Western front and marshaling the seven remaining men from his platoon he killed 20 German soldiers all on his own and in the doing saved 40 Australian soldiers from capture and almost certain death at the hands of a Hun firing squad. He was wounded seven times in that hand to hand fight, shot twice in the head and once through the body just near his super-sized heart, but he didn’t lay down and he didn’t give up or give up on his mates, even though it could have saved his own life.

See Albert Jacka knew that a life half-lived ain’t worth living, and he wanted to live so much that he was prepared to die to do so.

That’s why he went to Villers Brettoneux at Easter 1918 when he could easily have stayed away, and its why my great-grandad Jack Sheehan did too, and its why he and Albert stood side by side on Anzac Day 1918 and held the line against the marauding Kaiser’s invaders and saved the whole bloody show and won the war.

Albert Jacka was there when my ancestor died for his country, his people, his family and his mates. He was fighting right beside him when the mortar exploded his head, and he helped drag my Grand-dad’s remains in seven hundred different pieces over to safe ground so the pieces of charred flesh that used to him could be buried in Adelaide Cemetery and he could one day perhaps become the Unknown Soldier.

You find profanity offensive David.

I don’t give a f*ck.

I find dumb cunts who think they are smart who try to pot my f*cking mates thinking that what they’re being told is the truth instead of a two faced f*cking moron’s bloody bait offensive.

Are you right or am I? Neither of us are. It’s all just a subjective moral judgement, and black mixed with white is always grey.

One of my best mates is a committed Christian. He runs one of Brisbane’s leading schools and is the closest fella to walking in Christ’s shoes that I’ve ever known. He saved my wife’s life, even though he didn’t know it at the time, and I will love him forever for it. This man just sent me this book written by a fella named Bill Johnson – not the racehorse ratings man, the Jesus one – and the book is called God is Good.

It’s all about false prophets and the truth and forgiveness, and it’s good stuff.

I love you as a fella and I forgive you for your transgressions mate. But you have to make good. The industry that we love and which sustains us needs people like you and I to stand up for it, otherwise it’s just going to die in the trenches like who knows how many Anzacs would have if blokes like Albert Jacka and my grand-dad weren’t around.

As much as it hurts, you’ve just gotta let the bitterness you’re feeling right now as you realise that you’ve been done over go. Rivers flow forward rooster, and there are plenty of people out there who love you no matter how much you are scared of them doing so, and in spite of what ever damage over the years that you have done.

We’ve all done it David, that’s life on the punt. But Jesus didn’t die on a cross to save us so we could keep doing it again and again and again. He got the nails stuck through his hands and feet so we could say sh*t I have f*cked up and confess our sins and be healed and do good. Take it from someone who knows. We need to shake hands, hug and be friends.

There ain’t too many blokes in this town who love racing as much as you and me do. If the sport’s going to survive it has to repel the rapacious pack of hungry, greedy wolves that are circling waiting to devour it.

You and me are the only blokes that I know with the brains to do it rooster.

Subscribe for Free

Join 834 other followers

A Geebung Polo Club Production

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RESTRICTIONS

All articles on this site are the original work of the author unless otherwise attributed and may not be reproduced on or in any commercial medium without the express permission of the author. Any material used without permission will be invoiced to the publisher at standard MEAA freelance rates.